


The Cloths of Heaven

by viceroyvonmutini



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-07
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-16 19:17:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3499838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viceroyvonmutini/pseuds/viceroyvonmutini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke didn't believe in soulmates. She never wanted to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cloths of Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: If you're still taking prompts could you do a clexa soulmates or Clarke as a grounder (Ark or no Ark) AU?
> 
> Why yes Anon, I can get deliriously distracted by a Soulmate AU. I literally never do these, but I was inspired. I drew the tattoos and everything. I'm sorry it took so long. 
> 
> Title credits to W.B Yeats. Read the poem.

Clarke did not believe in soulmates.

Marriage on the Ark was often convenient, a way to propagate the human race: there was not as many fish in the sea as there once was.

Sure, she believed in love. She believed it were possible in some form: her parents were happy together for as long as she could remember, until her mother betrayed that love.

But soulmates just didn’t exist.

Unfortunately, the human race still clung onto what, in her mind, was a futile belief that people would one day find the one destined for them and so rather than eradicating whichever DNA strand governed this kind of thing, they let it continue.

So, just as every human had for as long as anyone could remember, on her 16th birthday Clarke’s skin burned with pain as her Soulmate Tattoo etched its way onto the surface.

She didn’t pay it much attention. No one found their soulmate these days. It was rare. Even her parents weren’t soulmates as such.

She bared it not a second glance, too preoccupied with helping her father do what was right.

It wasn’t until she had time on her hands that she really thought to look at it. Confined to a cell for what she had done, awaiting her 18th birthday to most likely be floated, she had more time to know what to do with and so she spared it a glance. Studied it.

It was said that it was not what the Soulmate mark depicted, but what it was thought to depict that mattered. ‘Gut instinct’ one book had said: _‘that certain feeling one gets when glancing at the mark, that is what must guide the search and lead its owner, when the time is right, to the correct match. Instinct in its most basic form.’_

Clarke’s tattoo was in an awkward place to study, though she could sometimes see the tip of the mark as she glanced over her left shoulder. Looking in the mirror, she could see its expanse: it began on her lower back, a flick of a tail, and rose, spiraling around her spinal chord like a vine swirling with tribal patterns before expanding onto her left shoulder blade like an inferno, the tips licking her shoulder and sides. She had never seen one so detailed.

It was not perfectly defined: it flared out, held stray branches that deviated from the main shape like it could not be contained, piercing out from the entangled designs. It was a swirling mess of patterns that she would spend hours idly looking at when she could, even attempting to draw some of them, though it rarely compared.

She had never met another with one like her own and presumed she never would, but she admired its beauty and somehow it gave her a solace, a fierce determination and yearning for somewhere far away from where she was.

She imagined it smelt like the ground.

She had never met another with a mark like her own, until she met Octavia Blake.

The girl had stripped to enter the water and Clarke had almost lost her footing because curled around the top of her bicep was something similar. Not the same, but similar. Details painstakingly woven in a tight band that felt like the forest around them, that seemed at home with where they found themselves despite how alien the earth now was.

Clarke confronted Octavia, and the two had spoken.

_‘You mark.’_

_‘My what?’_

_‘Your mark, your soulmate tattoo it’s like mine. It’s beautiful.’_

_‘Are you saying we’re soulmates because I swear to God that is not happening I don’t care about some stupid tattoo.’_

_‘No no, absolutely not! I just…I’ve never met another with a mark like mine.’_

_‘Like yours? No marks are the same Clarke, not even those of the one we’re destined for, everyone knows that.’_

_‘But yours, it sings doesn’t it? In the forest: it’s what made you go in the water. It makes this place feel like home even though we landed only yesterday right?’_

_Octavia put down her finished leg of meat and regarded Clarke with wary, surprised eyes._

_‘Yeah. It does I guess. It’s kinda like we were always meant to be here right? Like this is what we yearned for. I thought it was my freedom I guess: I’ve always been locked up but it’s something about this place. It feels right.’_

Octavia proved to Clarke the thing she had refused to believe in: soulmates. The Grounder, Lincoln, and her were almost inseparable. Longing looks and hushed meetings convinced Clarke Octavia had found the one she was destined for.

So Sky People and Grounders could belong to one another, she mused as she sketched the rising sun hitting the top of the drop-ship. She wondered whether her own was a Grounder (her marking made her think so) and what they were like. Whether they would ever stop this conflict in time to find out.

She liked it here, she decided. Even with the death and the danger: it gave her serenity.

Raven Reyes proved that the love of a soulmate could go on unrequited.

Clarke felt guilty for her actions with Finn, though he did not tell her of his predicament. Yet she felt less guilty with regards to Raven and more to that of her mark. What would her destined say? Did they know? Could they feel what she felt?

In any case, Raven was not Finn’s destined, and Finn was not her own destined. It brought more problems than answers.

_‘I’m sorry Raven. I didn’t know.’_

_‘I know.’_

_‘I…’_

_‘It’s fine Clarke. We have more important things to worry about. I’m over it.’_

_The two sat in silence: Raven dividing gunpowder whilst Clarke split bullet casings._

_‘How do you know?’_

_‘Know what?’_

_‘That he’s the One?’_

_Raven stopped her work._

_‘I just do.’_

_The room went back to silence, but Raven did not resume work._

_‘Our marks…are nothing alike. Mine’s…a chasm filled with fire. It’s kinda cool actually. Left lower back. Darkness licked with flames. I was so happy when I got it, scared I would get some lame ass one like a flower or something. His is an exploding star. I guess that’s you huh?’_

_‘Yeah…I guess…’_

_‘But when I look at him, it all just made sense. The fear, the anxiety everything just…made sense. It didn’t go away but…it fit together. I kind of think it’s meant to. I kind of think that…that the mark is everything your other half feels…how you see them.’_

Clarke liked that idea. She paid more attention to what she felt; distinguishing it from what her mark radiated and infected her mind with. It explained her serenity, her constant regulation of her self, burying what she brought to the surface.

She was in conflict with her soulmate, she reasoned. She did not know how, or why but she was. She wondered whether she would ever meet her soulmate. Whether her soulmate was even destined for her: what would she do if they were not? How did Raven cope?

She spent hours under the night sky gazing at the stars, seeking answers. She tried to listen to what it told her but she could make no sense. She reasoned her soulmate a Grounder, merely by the peace she felt upon the earth and in the trees, and a warrior battle-hardened who had lost many perhaps explaining her warring emotions. But that was all. Waves of sorrow and anger would wash over her at unannounced times as she struggled to divide herself from her mark, yet overcome with her own worries at what her soulmate experienced.

She wondered if her destined felt what she felt: if they even paid attention to their mark. She wondered what their mark was, how they saw her. Finn saw her as an exploding star to follow and to guide always. What did her soulmate see?

When she awoke in the White Room, in the heart of the Mountain Men’s lair she was afraid. She was lost and for the first time since she had arrived on the Earth she was no longer sure of where to go. Her mark raged with anger and repulsion as she was lead through tunnels secure from the outside, aching to leave this place.

So she tried, though the others would not listen. As she lay hidden in the hospital bed determined to find the mountain’s secrets she thought her mark was reacting to her surroundings as her destined would.

When she saw the Grounders strung captive she thought she understood why as her tattoo ached with vile horror and sorrow: a war of anger and pain for those her destined saw as kindred spirits.

Through the tunnels with the rescued Anya, the Reapers filled her with fear as they hid amongst them not daring to breathe, though there was a familiarity about them.

Walking with Anya, free of the mountain and the Reapers she pleaded with her to see reason: to work together to free their people.

_‘We have to work together!’_

_‘There is no we.’_

_‘Listen to me: it’s the only way we can get our people out of there. I don’t want a war with you, I never have! And your people have been taken by Mountain Men for years now! We can get them out, Anya.’_

_‘Our people? Do not think of us as one, Skaikru.’_

_‘I…look, can you at least speak to your leader? Or take me to them?’_

_‘She will not see those from the Sky: why should she?’_

_‘Because I’m trying to help you!’ yelled Clarke, exasperated. ‘This is ridiculous.’_

_‘Then stop.’_

_‘I’m not leaving my people to die. Or yours.’_

_‘Why? Why do you care so much for ours?’_

_‘Because I need you to help me free my people and if that means freeing yours too then so be it. I have no quarrel with you.’_

_‘You burned 300 of us alive!’_

_‘You attacked us! Do you think I enjoyed doing that? I hated it! It burned me as much as them! And it screamed in pain! In anger! In sorrow! I felt all of that for a people that you think I should not consider mine! So then why do I care so much for them?’_

_Clarke was yelling. Angry with herself and desperate. She could not understand. She knew but she could not understand. She didn’t expect Anya would either._

_‘You…felt for us?’_

_Clarke nodded slightly, not looking her in the eye._

_‘It. You said ‘it.’ What is that?’_

_Clarke looked up._

_‘My…mark: tattoo.’_

_‘Mark?’_

_‘Do you have them? They come when your 16. They’re meant to lead you to your soulmate. I used to not believe but since I’ve come down here, I can’t help but to think that it’s possible. It feels possible.’_

_There was a pause as Anya considered her words._

_‘My 16 th year…I was in battle when my skin burned, and not from a blade. An image appeared on my flesh.’_

_‘Yes. That’s it. So you do get them? Do you understand what they mean?’_

_‘I know that when I met my beloved, everything seemed right from that mark. It stopped singing…wrong.’_

_‘Singing out of tune…’ muttered Clarke, ‘I have a friend who said the same.’_

_‘I felt what they felt to many things. Reactions I could not call my own that were theirs in my body. Things I could not explain.’_

_‘Yes! Yes…that. When I landed…when I fell…I felt at peace. Even in all this danger, not knowing where I was, the trees felt like home. Like I didn’t have to keep searching for home anymore.’_

_Anya did not respond, glaring into the flames of the small fire they had lit._

_‘I will take you back to your camp. The Commander was my second: that should allow me an audience. I will advocate a union of our peoples.’_

_‘I…thank you.’_

Anya was felled before that could happen but Clarke now understood her reactions. Comprehended a little better what was happening.

Despite this, when she strode into the tent of the Commander, she was not at all prepared.

Fear, anxiety, power, strength: they had all dominated her as she walked past the glaring, chanting Grounders and faced Gustus’ deadly threat.

But when she entered that tent there was nothing but peace.

It was a weird type of peace that made her slow her pace as she approached the throne. It wasn’t as if all her problems had been solved, as if she had entered Utopia. In fact she was still intimately aware of the armed guards surrounding her and the ornate dagger her destined seemed to be playing with that could very well end up in her head, but she was at peace. Her mark stopped raging, her emotions quelled: she was in balance, like she had finally stepped onto the right path.

When the Commander looked up, she saw a flicker of something there too, and she wondered if she had just been hit with the same intense feeling of…relief.

Clarke understood then, what people meant when they said they just…knew.

She just…knew.

When the warrior spoke the unknown language she just…knew it. She did not understand what was said but she knew what was meant. She suspected that was due to the Commander before her.

The challenging gaze that met her as she reached for Anya’s braid, the barely concealed anguish at news of her death she felt them all intimately as if they were her own feelings, not as if there was one intruding against her own perceptions.

They worked well together, Lexa and Clarke. Clarke learned of her past, of Costia, and her vow never to care. She thought perhaps that Costia had been her beloved’s soul mate, that she was forever to be alone just as Raven had been subjected to, and she almost convinced herself of that, promising to distance herself from the Commander.

But she could not: the intense serenity she felt was addictive. It was like every piece of a puzzle put together, like nothing in the world mattered but her in those moments as they worked as one unit.

It made them a fierce-some team.

And sometimes she would catch glimpses of Lexa unguarded and unreserved, glancing her way. Scrutinising her with that glare that so often seemed to see right through her. She felt the scrutiny as much as saw it openly, feeling the way the questions tumbled around in Lexa’s mind as she struggled to grasp hold.

Saving her from the Pauna had changed things. She had felt the fear of losing the one meant for her and she fleetingly grasped what Raven had felt that night. As if the cold of space caught her mind, as if the thread tethering her might be snapped: floated.

She could not leave Lexa. Would not. It was like a freezing fire that would not let up for just an instant as she faced the loss.

The pain was almost unbearable.

And perhaps in a moment of misguided clarity, Clarke believed that Lexa too felt this.

_‘I was wrong about you Clarke. There is no weakness in your heart.’_

Nothing more needed to be said on the matter. Lexa was of few words with many meanings. Nothing had been clearer: a taste of perfect understanding.

It happened only once more, that perfect knowledge. They had fought and argued, Clarke protecting her people. But she did not want to stay estranged. She was angry with Lexa and fearful that she would be alone. So she snapped. But called back into that tent, the air had shifted. There was a vulnerability she sensed that was not there before and when they kissed, finally, Clarke never wanted anything else.

She didn’t need anything else as Lexa’s thumb ghosted over her cheek with such tenderness that she almost didn’t expect from the Commander. But she knew then that this was not as she had feared. That Lexa had felt everything and whether she understood it or not, she had at least faced it.

‘You…’ she breathed out like a prayer. Like an answer to an age-old question she hadn’t been aware she had been asking.

Clarke merely stared in wonder. She understood what the literature had said, ‘the only two people that mattered’, and why Octavia could not leave Lincoln. She could never leave. She did not have the strength.

She shivered at the thought, recalling the Pauna’s attack and believed she could never face that.

You cannot miss what you have never known, yet now knowing this she could never let it go.

But war called, and Lexa answered.

And plans changed.

Clarke knew death.

Clarke knew it the moment Lexa turned her back and walked away.

She was so cold.

It was not broken, but it was frozen, and everything shifted as her equilibrium shattered before her. She felt everything and she felt nothing: she felt the burn in her eyes as she held back tears. Not her own, but Lexa’s. She felt the kink in her jaw as she hardened her gaze: not her own, but Lexa’s. And she felt the helplessness. Not her own, but Lexa’s.

She pleaded ignorance but understood everything.

That night she knew strength.


End file.
